Rolling, lining and blind baking

Once you’ve invested time and love making your pastry, you want to make sure you treat it with the same delicate hand when rolling it out and lining the tart shell.

Rolling the pastry

While most pastry tends to shrink a little during baking, you can help reduce this by working the pastry as little as possible when rolling it out. Overworking the pastry develops the gluten in the flour and this not only increases the chances of shrinkage, it also toughens it. Always roll pastry on a lightly floured work surface from the centre outwards, rotating the pastry 45 degrees at regular intervals rather than rolling the pin back and forth.

If it is warm in your kitchen and the dough becomes too soft to work with and sticks to the work surface, roll the pastry out between two pieces of baking paper, then refrigerate it briefly until it firms up a little.

Lining the tin

To transfer the pastry to the tin, place your rolling pin on the bottom end of the pastry and loosely roll the pastry around the pin. Carefully unroll the pastry into the tin. If you have rolled out your pastry between pieces of baking paper, remove the top sheet, then carefully invert the pastry over the tart tin (make sure you centre the pastry over the tin when you do this, because it’s difficult to move it once in the tin), then peel off the paper.

Once the pastry is in the tin, quickly lift up the excess pastry hanging over the side, so it doesn’t break over the sharp edge of the tin. Dust lightly with flour (photo 1). To trim the pastry, carefully run a small sharp knife around the rim of the tin and cut away the excess pastry (2).

Alternatively, if you are using a liquid filling, such as a filling for quiche, leave the edge of the pastry slightly overhanging the side of the tin to allow for any shrinkage. If the pastry shrinks, you run the risk of the filling seeping over the edge of the pastry and underneath the base, which will make it soggy. As soon as the cooked tart is removed from the oven, trim around the edge of the tin using a small sharp knife. Cutting the pastry after cooking does look a bit less tidy than if you had cut it beforehand, but it ensures you won’t have a soggy base.

Refrigerate the pastry-lined tin for 30 minutes before baking. This helps the gluten in the flour to ‘relax’ and will reduce the chances of shrinkage.

Blind baking

To blind bake your tart shell, line the base and side of the chilled tart shell with a large piece of foil, leaving the foil overhanging the side.

Fill to the top with uncooked rice (3), dried beans or baking beads, then fold the foil over the top of the rice to leave the top edge of the tart shell exposed (4). Filling with weights such as rice prevents the pastry from rising unevenly and blistering as it cooks. To a certain extent, it also reduces the possibility of the pastry sides shrinking, however, this will have more to do with how the pastry was made and rolled. You can buy baking beads from kitchenware shops, but I find rice works better as it gives a more consistent coverage (and it’s considerably cheaper). You can reuse the rice or beans repeatedly.

Blind bake the tart shell at 180°C (350°F) for 20 minutes, or until the base is light golden. Remove the rice and foil and allow the tart shell to cool before filling.

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cooking tip :

L It is a good idea to reserve some of the pastry scraps in case your tart shell cracks a little during blind baking. If your filling is reasonably dry, a crack won’t matter too much, but if it is runny, the liquid will seep through the crack, resulting in a soggy pastry base. Simply patch up any cracks on the hot tart shell with a small piece of reserved pastry and return to the oven for 5 minutes or so to allow it to dry out.